Hello friends, I trust your weekend went well. For those fortunate enough to have Labor Day off (oops I said Memorial Day earlier) I salute you, for those that have to work you have my condolences. This weekend was PAX as many of you are well aware of. It was my first trip there, thankfully I was joined by my friend Cesar and fellow 1UP alumn Davin "Jinpei" Loh so that I didn't get too lost over there. The flight up was smooth and the weather was great. Seattle sure is more green than LA. It reminded me a bit of San Francisco, with the hills and weather that changed in a few hours.

The convention center was very nice. There was a huge glass awning that covered the span of the entire block. People could be outdoors without dealing with the random downpours. Good job architects!

The show, and crowd itself had an amazing vibe. It felt very much on par with the larger industry shows like the GDC, Comic Con and even E3... up to a point. Many of the kiosks that the publishers used at the trade events were made available for the public. So if anybody has ever wondered what the experience was like at the trade events could get a taste at PAX.

Booths were elaborately decorated, some had massive props, either made for the game or by a studio for a movie tie-in, like the Avatar props.

Saw the Capcom crowd there, no Kramez or Seth but Snow, Randy and Rey were there. Visitors were all over Lost Planet 2, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and checking out Resident Evil 5 for the PC in 3D. The 3D effects were pretty good. Provided you had an expensive rig.

One of the crazy things at the show was a mechanical war horse brought in by THQ to promoteDarksiders. So how did the game itself play? It had more polish than what was shown at the E3, it's no God of War or Devil May Cry but it'll hold over fans of action titles.

As wild as the mechanical horse set-up was, it was not the craziest or most random thing I saw at PAX. Two guys, overcome with the geektastic emotions of PAX decided to have an impromptu extreme thumb wrestling battle. The guys were flipping each other over and rolling on the ground like MMA fighters, all the while trying to pin down each other's thumb. To the people passing by it looked like they were beating each other up.

Hands on with upcoming videogames were the reason that many people went, but it wasn't the only reason. Where PAX stood apart was in the inclusion of tabletop gaming and the rest of game culture at the show. A library of tabletop games were made available for check-out from a gaming library. Entire rooms were set up for gaming sessions for both novice and advanced players. People were playing tabletop games in just about every space available.

PAX was a good place for the smaller tabletop gaming companies to get noticed by the public, and in this case, get some free press on the blog. Arcane Legions was like a gateway into tabletop gaming. The game features and alternate-universe past with battles between Roman and Egyptian-era armies, however with the added benefit of monsters and magic. The pre-painted and pre-assembled plastic miniatures are relatively inexpensive. With easy-to-manage units and simplified miniature-based skirmish rules I'm hoping that the young attendees of PAX might consider getting into the hobby because of that.

For those of us that are older, and those lucky few that make lots of money, there were custom made gaming tables being demoed at the show. These tables were made of hardwoods and contained storage compartments and fold-out trays that would be the envy of any gamer. As you can imagine, these tables were anything but cheap, damn they looked nice though!

Sharing space in the archway bridge with 1UP and Ignition Entertainment were my favorite Bellevue Washington residents, the tabletop gaming people from Privateer Press.

They were showing off the upcoming expansion to Monsterpocalypse in a grand style. You can imagine that those that never gave tabletop gaming a second thought would reconsider the implications of daikaiju (giant monster) combat in pre-painted collectable miniature form.

It was an amazing balance struck between traditional tabletop gaming, videogaming and the related cultures. Smaller studios got a chance to show the people their wares and get the hyped on upcoming titles. The Maw had an awesome plushy to go along with their game and Shank also had some great merchandise to go along with their game about ass-kicking.

I realize that most of you will get DeathSpank right away whenever it is released. I'm one of those hoping that the models they showed off might get the vinyl treatment in the near future...

Of course the show wasn't all about gaming. There were plenty of panels covering a diversity of subjects. Each panel was packed as lines before the panel often wrapped around the lengthy convention center corridors. Davin and I managed to catch the hybrid live/ webcast Co-Op recording. Davin recounted a shameful memory of the Dreamcast on the eve of it's 10th birthday. Ask him about it if you get the chance.

For my first time going I could tell that PAX worked because it was one of the rare shows (to use a cliche) of the people, by the people and for the people. Yes there were plenty of massive publishers there hawking their wares, but they also realized that taking the games to the people, rather than the press, meant a lot more for their image than any magazine interview ever could. Now if only some of the other publishers, Activision I'm looking at you, could take a hint and jump on board then we really could have the E3-meets- GenCon-meets GDC for the masses. The people that attended were genuinely happy to be there. I've never seen a gathering with as many people sharing positive vibes all weekend-long.

I suppose people from So Cal could become jaded with the convention experience but this was refreshing as far as events go. I'm pretty sure I'll be back next year and the following years too!

Of course if you have read this far then you are probably waiting for cosplay pics. Well here are a few choice ones.

The rest of the pics will be posted on a slideshow tomorrow along with a booth crawl video. My home computer just isn't fast enough to capture and edit the content so these pics will have to hold you over until then.

There is also an amazing-but-true story that went down at one of the panels. But that will have to wait. As for the 1UP meet-up. Let's just say that things were casual on the PAX floor while everything else became a blur at the Gameworks. But you can check Tina or Mike's blogs for highlights of that.

Have a great Labor Day and I hope to see you back tomorrow.